Meetings

General technique · See it on the map

Runnable here

A deliberately convened session where specific people decide something or share status together.

When to use it

The purpose genuinely needs synchronous, multi-party interaction — a decision that needs several people's input at once, a problem that needs real-time back-and-forth to work through, or status that needs discussion, not just reporting.

When to avoid it

When the purpose is pure information transfer that a written update would carry just as well — a status meeting with no decision on the agenda is a push communication wearing a meeting's clothes, and it costs every attendee's calendar to deliver what an email would have. Also avoid convening a meeting before you know what decision it needs to produce.

Steps

1. Set a specific purpose and a short agenda before sending the invite — 'sync up' is not a purpose.
2. Invite only the people whose input or authority the purpose actually needs.
3. Start by restating the purpose and what decision or output the meeting needs to leave with.
4. Capture decisions and action items as they're made, not from memory afterward.
5. End by confirming who owns each action item and by when.
6. Send the notes and action items to attendees and anyone who needed the outcome but wasn't in the room.

What it produces

• Meeting notes: decisions made, action items with owners and dates.

Common pitfalls

• Convening a meeting with no clear decision or output, and calling status reporting a substitute for one.
• Inviting everyone who might be interested instead of everyone whose input is needed, so the meeting can't actually decide anything without a follow-up.
• No agenda, so the group discovers the purpose live and burns the first ten minutes finding it.
• Decisions made verbally with nothing captured, so the same debate recurs next meeting.

Worked example

Instead of a recurring one-hour status call with the full project team, the PM cancels it and sends a written weekly update. She keeps a thirty-minute meeting with just the four leads whose sequencing decisions actually need real-time negotiation, with a one-line agenda: resolve the conduit-versus-mezzanine sequencing question.

Source

• PMBOK-6 §10.2.2.7

Where it comes from: this technique is named by the PMBOK Guide, 6th edition.